Word: rude
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...Vermont curiosity is traditionally impolite. Even so, Vermonters wonder why a state that ranks 48th in murder should rank so high in self-destruction (about five male suicides for each female, 3½ times as many gunshot deaths as hangings). Some have become rude enough to hypothesize. State Pathologist Richard S. Woodruff blames the suicide rate on three local factors: 1) two centuries of inbreeding, 2) mental depression stimulated by lonely mountains and rugged climate, 3) lack of mental health facilities. State Tax Commissioner Leonard W. Morrison adds a practical fourth cause. Says he of a state where...
...Hawkins wanders through a bargain basement jungle and holds forth with humorless impunity against the bourgeois idiom and the "rude, smelly shoppers...
...Peter in the Vatican, a figure so noble in size and concept that it dwarfs even Lady Flora's proud body and arrogant mind. She comes daily to stand in communion with the statue and watch the devout worshipers kiss St. Peter's foot. One day a rude man of the people catches her attention because "he stood still so long with his mouth against St. Peter's foot." When he moves on. Lady Flora is impelled to kiss the saintly toe as well. Her reward, however, is not faith but syphilis...
...Captain Bligh's legendary dictum that "a midshipman is the lowest form of life in the British Navy." But Phil the Greek (as he was sometimes called) weathered every storm. In two terms he received only one day's punishment, and might well have avoided a second rude admonition had it not been for a young lady who came to call...
...close associates: "He doesn't mind putting himself out for people it's his duty to entertain. But when he wants facts from someone who is supposed to have them and he finds out they don't or are indifferent-well, then he can be bloody rude." He once interrupted a long-winded scientist in the midst of a long lecture, to remark: "That's all very well, but you still haven't found out what makes my bath water gurgle." On another occasion, he snapped at an admiral whose demeanor indicated he had drunk...